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nourishment from the earth.
In both cases, offshoots spring from the
governing parts, which is key to Galen’s analogy.
He calls it a general
principle, known to everyone with expertise in natural sciences: the greater
is the source of the smaller,
and, even more so in animals than in
plants.
It must therefore follow that the liver is the source (rhizō sis)of
veins. This claim is also supported by a citation from Hippocratic On
Humours,
stating that ‘for as the earth is to the trees, so the stomach is to
animals’.
This analogy establishes that the liver is the anatomical source of veins.
Then he moves on to the second step, that is, showing that the liver and
veins are not just physically connected, but also that there is a physiological
hierarchy between them. To establish this point, Galen uses as a foil the
account that takes the liver to be the producer of blood but makes the
heart the supplier of the power to veins. Such an account, he argues, is
unreasonable, because the source of production ought to be the source of
power too.
The liver, therefore, is not a servant to the heart but a ‘leader
and ruler’ (ἡγεμόνος καὶἄρχοντος) in its own right.
This point is
supported by the evidence from dissection that shows the liver, not the
heart, to be connected to the veins in a way that points to their source. The
vena cava, notably, is connected to the heart only by an offshoot branch.
If the veins grew from the heart, they would be observed to branch off
from the heart, just like the great artery growing from the left ventricle of
the heart that splits into two branches, one going to the head and another
one to the spinal column. This is not the case for veins, however.
Thus, Galen establishes the liver as the hēgemon and moves on to the
proof concerning the production of blood. Here, he aims to show that it
must be attributed to the liver and not to the heart. The substance of the
liver is, he argues, much closer to that of blood, and therefore, it is more
proper for the production of the blood.
Subsequently, he also argues that
PHP ..– de Lacy (.–K), see also Anonymous Londinensis .– Manetti (:
–) that attributes to Hippocrates the claim that we are rooted in air like plants in moisture.
PHP .. de Lacy (.); see also Prop. Plac. . ( Lami Garofalo).
PHP .. de Lacy (.K).
PHP .. de Lacy (.K).
Interestingly, Holmes (: esp. ) has shown that the Hippocratic texts do not, in fact, ascribe
the status of the soul to the vegetative functions, so citing Hippocrates in the context of this
discussion is not entirely accurate.
PHP .. de Lacy (.K), tr. de Lacy (–: ); Hippocrates’ quote is from Hum.
(, Overwien¼. Littré).
PHP ..– de Lacy (.–K); my discussion is brief, because there is already an excellent
extensive analysis of this argument in Hankinson (a).
PHP .. de Lacy (.K), tr. de Lacy (–: ).
PHP ..– de Lacy (.–K).
PHP ..– de Lacy (.–K).
Nutrition, Growth and Vegetative Capacities
the heart is the source of pneuma-like and boiling blood, which indicates
that the heart must be the seat of the spirited, not the vegetative soul.
The argument from temperature not only supports his anatomical
point b ut also leads to a significant physiological observation. Having
noted that he has provided eno ugh proof that the transmission of nutri-
ment comes from the area of the stomach to the heart in On the Natural
Capacities,
Galen argues that the seat for the spirited soul, but not the
vegetative one, must necessarily be warm (which is true of the heart, not
the liver area). Furthermore, the vegetative soul found in plants is much
colder than the spirited soul in animals. In animals, these two souls are
closer in warmth, and, overall, the vegetative soul found in plants is colder
than the vegetative soul found in animals.
In animals, it has to be warm
in order to make the nutritive fluid warm; at the same t ime, its heat mu st
also be fairly gentle, since it is not the kind of boiling heat that is strong
enough to make veins pulsate.
This claim marks the crucial distinction
between the plant and the animal life: the heat. Animals are not merely
extra warm plants, the warmth provided by the spirited soul is so great
that it makes them possessed of an entirely different kind of vitality. The
nature of the spirited soul and i ts domain (including the significance of
heat) will be analysed in greater detail in Chapter . For current purposes,
it is important to note that the domain of the liver is marked by a very low
heat, distinguished by slow and barely perceptible pulsation.
With the arguments outlined in this section, Galen establishes that the
ruling part of the vegetative domain in animals is the liver and outlines the
anatomy of the domain of the vegetative soul. Using the scheme distin-
guishing the four types of parts discussed in Chapter , we can identify the
governing part (the liver) and its offshoots (veins), connecting it with the
rest of the body. There are also parts that are both self-managed and
subject to the governance of the liver. The stomach, discussed in
Chapter , is one such part. In order to understand how the double-
ruling – the internal one and the ‘external’ one (in the sense of being
governed by the principal organs) – takes place and how it results in
PHP .. de Lacy (.K).
This seems to refer not to one specific argument but to a number of points that support such a view.
Nat. Fac. . (– Helmreich¼.–K); . (– Helmreich¼.–K); .
(– Helmreich¼.–K) are some of the examples.
This is one of the ways in which the liver does, in the end, differ from plants. Another is having a
nerve inserted in it, just like all viscera of an animal, see UP . (., – Helmreich¼.K).
PHP ..– de Lacy (.–K), esp.: οὔτε γὰρ ἂνοὕτως θερμὸνεἰργάζετο χυμόν, εἰ μὴ καὶ
αὐτὸ τοιοῦτον ὑπῆρχεν, οὔτ’ ἀσφύκτους ἂνεἶχε τὰς φλέβας, εἰ ζεούσης θερμασίας ἦν ἀρχή.
. The Seat of the Vegetative Soul and Its Anatomy
nutrition, the following section looks more closely at the process by which
the body processes, distributes and absorbs nourishment.
. The Vital Activities of the Liver
The liver is the governing part of the vegetative domain, and it is in charge
of two related processes: nourishment and growth. The digestive system
underpins both of them, and therefore it will be the starting point for
investigating the scope and the nature of the activities of the vegetative
soul. To the modern reader, the stomach might intuitively seem like the
proper organ of digestion, but Galen actually describes the digestive system
as a group of different organs working together. They all perform the same
task – the breaking down of the nutriment – and the division of labour is
surprisingly even. Possibly the clearest account of this process can be found
in On the Natural Capacities. With an overarching aim to show that the
process of nutrition is governed by natural capacities, Galen writes that
several organs are necessary to carry out the process of digestion for the
following reason:
ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἡἐνέργεια ταύτης τῆς δυνάμεως ἐξομοίωσίς ἐστιν, ὁμοιοῦσθαι
δὲ καὶ μεταβάλλειν εἰς ἄλληλα πᾶσι τοῖςοὖσιν ἀδύνατον, εἰ μή τινα ἔχοι
κοινωνίαν ἤδη καὶ συγγένειαν ἐνταῖς ποιότησι, διὰ τοῦτο πρῶτον μὲνοὐκ
ἐκ πάντων ἐδεσμάτων πᾶνζῷον τρέφεσθαι πέφυκεν, ἔπειτα δ’ οὐδ’ ἐξ ὧν
οἷόν τ’ ἐστὶνοὐδ’ ἐκ τούτων παραχρῆμα, καὶ
διὰ ταύτην τὴν ἀνάγκην
πλειόνων ὀργάνων ἀλλοιωτικῶντῆςτροφῆς ἕκαστον τῶνζῴων χρῄζει. ἵνα
μὲνγὰρτὸ ξανθὸν ἐρυθρὸν γένηται καὶ τὸἐρυθρὸν ξανθόν, ἁπλῆςκαὶ μιᾶς
δεῖται τῆς ἀλλοιώσεως· ἵνα δὲ τὸ λευκὸν μέλαν καὶ τὸ μέλαν λευκόν,
ἁπασῶντῶν μεταξύ. καὶ τοίνυν καὶ τὸ μαλακώτατον οὐκ ἂν ἀθρόως
σκληρότατον καὶ τ
ὸ σκληρότατον οὐκ ἂν ἀθρόως μαλακώτατον γένοιτο,
ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τὸ δυσωδέστατον εὐωδέστατον οὐδ’ ἔμπαλιν τὸ
εὐωδέστατον δυσωδέστατον ἐξαίφνης γένοιτ’ ἄν ... ὅτι δὲ καὶ τῷἄρτῳ
καὶ πολὺ μᾶλλον θριδακίνῃ καὶ τεύτλῳ καὶ τοῖς ὁμοίοις παμπόλλης δεῖται
τῆς ἀλλοιώσεως εἰςαἵματος γένεσιν, οὐδὲ τοῦτ’ ἄδηλον. ἓνμὲνδὴ τοῦτ’
αἴτιον τοῦ πολλὰ γενέσθαι τ
ὰ περὶ τὴντῆςτροφῆς ἀλλοίωσιν ὄργανα.
For since the action of this capacity is assimilation, and it is impossible for
anything to be assimilated by, and to change into anything else unless they
already possess a certain community and affinity in their qualities, therefore,
in the first place, any animal cannot naturally derive nourishment from any
kind of food, and secondly, even in the case of those from which it can do
so, it cannot do this at once. Therefore, by reason of this law, every animal
needs several organs for altering the nutriment. For in order that the yellow
may become red, and the red yellow, one simple process of alteration is
Nutrition, Growth and Vegetative Capacities
required, but in order that the white may become black, and the black
white, all the intermediate stages are needed. So also, a thing which is very
soft cannot all at once become very hard, nor vice versa; nor, similarly can
anything which has a very bad smell suddenly become quite fragrant, nor
again, can the converse happen ... Further, it is quite clear that bread, and
more particularly lettuce, beet, and the like, require a great deal of alteration
in order to become blood. This, then, is one reason why there are so many
organs concerned with the alteration of food.
In the long discussion that follows, Galen names the other two reasons,
viz. the need to discharge superfluities (περίσσωμα) and the need to carry
pabulum (κατατετμημέναι) in every direction. Digestion is effectively a
very long and complex conversion process of foodstuffs into blood, and
numerous parts are needed in order to perform various stages of this
process. The egalitarian standing of all the parts involved in digestion is
striking, and it naturally raises the question of the role of the liver. Why
does this conveyor-like process need a hēgemon?
The answer is suggested by the arguments in On the Doctrines of
Hippocrates and Plato and On the Usefulness of Parts, where Galen attacks
Erasistratus’ claim that the heart is the source of both arteries and veins.
This claim, apparently made in the first book of On Fevers, must have been
quite brief because Galen takes it upon himself to figure out possible
motivations for making it and to reject them all in turn. Most pertinently,
he complains that Erasistratus did not provide a clear account of the
production of blood, despite the fact that it is more significant than the
activity of the stomach. He supports this point by stating that, while it
would be possible to survive if the stomach could not crush food, the same
would not be the case if the activity of the liver – the production of blood –
was damaged.
Given Galen’s claim at the beginning of Book of On the
Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, stating that the motion of the liver is
much harder to observe, it is clear that the liver is the distributor of the
nutriment processed by the digestive system: it is in control of how much
nutriment to send, as well as where and when to send it. This role alone
would earn the liver the title of the hēgemon, but it has another important
activity. In Book of On the Usefulness of Parts, Galen describes the
activities of the liver as follows:
Nat. Fac. . (, –, Helmreich¼.–K), tr. Brock (: –).
PHP .. de Lacy (.K). In the case of damage to the stomach, one could survive on liquids.
This claim is unpacked further against the background of Galen’s understanding of parthood in
Chapter .
. The Vital Activities of the Liver
Αὐτὸ δὲ τὸἧπαρ, ἐπειδὰναὐτὴν παραλάβῃ πρὸςτῶν ὑπηρετῶν ἤδη
παρεσκευασμένην καὶ οἷον ὑπογραφήν τινα καὶἀμυδρὸνεἶδος αἵματος
ἔχουσαν, ἐπάγει τέλεον αὐτῇ τὸν κόσμον εἰςαἵματος ἀκριβοῦς γένεσιν.
ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ τῶν κατὰ τὴν γαστέρα τὰ μὲνοὕτω μοχθηρὰ καθάπερ ἐντῷ
σίτῳ γῆ καὶ λίθοι καὶ τὰ τῶν ἀγρίων ὀσπρίων σπέρματα διεκέκριτο, τὰ δ’
οἷον ἄχνη καὶ πίτυρον ἑτέρας καθάρσεως ἐδεῖτο, ταύτην αὖθις ἐπάγει τῇ
τροφῇ τὴν κάθαρσιν τὸἧπαρ.
When the liver has received the nutriment already prepared by its servants
and having the crude outline, as it were, and indistinct semblance of blood,
it provides the final elaboration itself so that the nutriment becomes actual
blood. The impurities corresponding to the earth, stones, and seeds of wild
plants in the wheat were eliminated from the food in the stomach, but this
stands in need of a second cleansing from the impurities corresponding to
the chaff and bran in wheat, and it is the liver which accomplishes thus
further purification of the nutriment.
The liver, in short, performs the crucial final stage in the production of
blood before sending it out for distribution throughout the rest of the
body.
Evidently, Galen takes this step to be distinct from other digestive
stages, because the loss of this stage compromises a body’s ability to be
nourished in the way that the loss of another part of the digestive system
(e.g., the stomach) does not. To be precise, the liver, according to him,
purifies the blood.
The vivid analogy to the processing of wheat grain
spells this point out explicitly: the liver separates nutritious material from
non-nutritious in the same way as farmers separate grains from bits of
earth, stones and wild seeds. Galen, however, is unsatisfied with just one
analogy and, noting that a comparison to liquid substance processing
would be even clearer, describes young wine that is still fermenting, its
dregs still sinking down while the fine parts rise to the surface. The upper
portions are like the useful blood that the liver properly separates, before
sending it out to the rest of the body. The residues from the final
production of blood in the liver are divided into two types: the thin yellow
one (received by the bladder) and the thick muddy one (received by the
spleen).
After some further processing via such organs as kidneys,
UP . (., – Helmreich¼.K), tr. May (: ).
It is evident that this is meant to be distinct from other digestive stages from the fact that, as
mentioned earlier, the loss of this stage compromises a body’s ability to be nourished in the way that
the loss of another part of the digestive system (e.g., the stomach) does not.
The activity of the liver is parallel to the activities of the other two central organs, which elaborate
the vital pneuma and the psychic pneuma. These processes will be discussed in Chapter .
UP . (.–, – Helmreich¼.–K). These are the yellow and the black bile,
respectively. The latter is an especially mysterious substance, and Galen does not theorise it in a
consistent way; see Stewart ().
Nutrition, Growth and Vegetative Capacities
gallbladder, spleen and so on, the former is expelled from the body as urine
and the latter as excrement.
Once the two non-useful residues are separated, and thus the blood is
completely concocted by the innate heat, the bright red useful blood is sent
out by the liver via the veins.
The supply of blood plays a crucial part in
the healthy maintenance of the animal body because it is the key material
component for the growth and regeneration of bodily tissues. In this way,
nutrition and growth are effectively two aspects of the same function.
The liver, as the refiner and the distributor of blood via its offshoots
(veins), stands at the centre of this process. Owing to the fact that it
reaches the whole body by means of the veins, it is able to connect all the
body parts via a single nutrition system and thus establish the means for an
organism as a whole to grow and be nourished.
. Natural or Innate Capacities
The anatomical account discussed up to this point is fairly straightforward.
But understanding the processes of nutrition properly requires an account
of how the liver is able to carry out its activities. In order to produce such
an account, Galen has to dabble in a bit of phusiologia,
because the issue
at stake is theoretical: it is a matter of the mechanism by means of which
the liver distributes the blood. We know that it has its own motion that
enables it to send the blood out, but what causes this motion?
In his time, Galen had a choice between two competing theories, each
with very different implications for the understanding of human nature.
The first is derived from the mechanistic model of physiology, advocated
by the followers of Erasistratus and Asclepiades of Bithynia.
Second, the
‘Hippocratic’ model positing natural capacities could be called a vitalist
alternative.
On the Natural Capacities presents an extensive rejection of
the first option and support for the latter. All the arguments concerning
UP .– (., – Helmreich¼.K).
The fact that natural growth also presupposes nutrition – so that expanding tissue does not merely
distend but genuinely increase in size – is an important point in Galen’s polemics against
mechanistic theorists in Nat. Fac. .. He uses the example of a children’s game involving an
animal’s bladder to illustrate his point; see Nat. Fac. . (, – Helmreich¼.–K). This
passage is discussed further in Section ...
For ‘physiology’ and phusiologia, see the discussion in the Introduction.
Although Galen generally focuses on the mechanistic aspect of the Erasistratean thought, the latter
in fact combined both mechanistic and teleological explanations, as argued by von Staden (b).
In the sense that organic entities are governed by fundamentally different principles than the non-
organic ones; in this case, those principles are natural capacities.
. Natural or Innate Capacities
specific organs share the same key point in common: their activities are a
result of their innate capacities.
These capacities are inherent in the
homoeomerous tissues and are determined by the mixture of the four
qualities: hot, cold, dry and wet.
This point is crucial not only for the argument in this treatise but also
for Galenic physiology in general: all the tissues in the animal body are
endowed with innate capacities enabling them to perform certain actions
without any external impetus. On the Natural Capacities outlines how the
four natural capacities – attractive, alterative, retentive and expulsive –
account for the processes in various organs, granting them a certain degree
of functional sufficiency. As the four-fold division of parts discussed in
Chapter states, some parts are governing parts (ἀρχαί), others are capable
of self-management (διοίκησις), while yet others are both self-managed and
governed by the principles. Whatever degree of self-management a part
might have, it must be owing to its innate capacities. These capacities
allow the tissues to draw nutriment to themselves, assimilate it by altering
its properties to those of their own while retaining it,
and to expel any
matter that they can no longer process.
This account is a rival to mechanistic accounts. Much of On the Natural
Capacities is dedicated to refuting Erasistratus’ use of the horror vacui
principle to explain all the processes pertaining to digestion and certain
other physiological processes.
However, it is important to note that, at
the end of the treatise, he clarifies that mechanistic explanations are not
impossible, only inappropriate to certain cases. He explains at length the
differences between mechanical attraction and capacity-based attraction,
ascribing the former to cavities and the latter to tissues; he also notes
various differences among them.
The point about the contrast is fairly
apt: as far as he is concerned, the capacity-centred explanation is the proper
one even when a phenomenon resembling horror vacui takes place, because
such a phenomenon is also fundamentally explainable in terms of
Nat. Fac. . (, – Helmreich ¼.K): εἰ μὴ γὰρ δύναμίς τις σύμφυτος ἑκάστῳ τῶν
ὀργάνων ὑπὸ τῆς φύσεως εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς δοθείη, διαρκεῖνοὐ δυνήσεται τὰ ζῷα, μὴὅτι
τοσοῦτον ἀριθμὸν ἐτῶν ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἡμερῶν ὀλιγίστων. The use of the term τό ὄργανον indicates
that the issue at stake is the complete activity of the parts (see Section ...). See also Nat. Fac. .
( Helmreich¼.K); . ( Helmreich¼.K) and . ( Helmreich¼.K).
Nat. Fac. . (, – Helmreich¼.K).
As explained in the aforementioned passage Nat. Fac. . (, –, H¼.–K).
See, for example, Nat. Fac. . (– Helmreich¼.–K). The attack against Erasistratus’
explanatory model is developed through Book and in parts of Book as well. See also Vallance
(: –). For more on horror vacui, see Berryman ().
Nat. Fac. . (– Helmreich¼.–K).
Nutrition, Growth and Vegetative Capacities
capacities. Although Galen’s own understanding of physiology and human
nature does not eschew the mechanistic explanation entirely, he takes them
to be subordinate to the capacity-based explanations
that rely on the
innate ability of tissues to manage themselves via four natural capacities.
It is the drawing of what is appropriate that initiates the process of
nutrition. The following account in On the Causes of Symptoms provides a
fairly detailed description of how it takes place:
[ἡ φύσις] ἔδωκε δὲ καὶ τῆς ἐνδείας αἴσθησιν, ἵν’ ἐξορμῶντα τὰ ζῶαπρόςτετὴν
ἐδωδήν τε καὶ πόσιν ἑνὶ χρόνῳ πληρῶνται. καὶ καλεῖται μὲν ἡ τῆςτοιαύτης
πληρώσεως ἔφεσις ὄρεξις, γίνεται δ’ ἐπ’ αἰσθήσει τῆς ἐνδείας, ὅταν αἱ μὲν
φλέβες ἐξαὐτῆςτιτῆςγαστρὸς ἕλκωσιν οἷον βδάλλουσαί τε καὶ μυζῶσαι, μὴ
φέρουσα δὲ τὴνμύζησινἡ γαστὴρ, ἀλλ’ οἷον διασπωμένη, τῆς ἀνίας ταύτης
ἴαμα τὴν ἐδωδὴνπορίζηται. τρέπονται γὰραἱ φλέβες οὕτως ἐπὶ τὰ
παρακείμενα σιτία, κᾀξαὐτῶν ἕλκουσι τὴν τροφὴν, οὐκ ἐκτῆςγαστρὸς,
καὶ συμβαίνει μετὰ τὴνπροσφορὰν ἅμα τε τὰς φλέβας ἐπὶ τὰ σιτία τρέπεσθαι
καὶ τὴνκοιλίανεἰς ἑαυτὴν ἕλκειν ἐξαὐτῶν ὅσον κεκένωται πρότερον ὑπὸ τῶν
φλεβῶν. ἡ μὲνοὖντῆςμυζήσεωςαἴσθησίς ἐστιν ἡ πεῖνα· δύο δὲἄλλα, τὸ μὲν
τοῦ βδάλλειν τὰς φλέβας ἡγεῖται, καὶ καλεῖται καὶ τοῦτο ὄρεξις ὁμωνύμως
θατέρῳ, φυσικὸν ἔργον ὑπάρχον, οὐ ψυχικόν· αὐτῆςδὲ τῆςτοιαύτηςὀρέξεως
ἡ κένωσις προηγεῖται καὶ γίγνεται πέντε συμπτώματα τὰ σύμπαντα κατὰ
στίχον ἐφεξῆς ἀλλήλων τεταγμένα· κένωσις μὲνπρώτη, δευτέρα δὲὄρεξις ἡ
φυσικὴ τῶν κενωθέντων μορίων, εἶτα ἡ μύζησις τῆςκοιλίας, εἶτα ἡ ταύτης
αἴσθησις, εἶτα ἡὄρεξις αὐτῆς ἡ ψυχικὴἁπασῶν ὑστάτη.
And it [nature] has given a perception of lack so that animals are stimulated
to fill themselves with food and drink at one time. And the desire for such
filling is called appetite, but it arises from the perception of lack whenever the
veins draw from the stomach itself, as if to milk or suck, although the
stomach does not bear the sucking, but is, as it were, ‘distracted’, providing
itself with food as a remedy for this distress. In this way, the veins turn to the
foods at hand and draw nourishment from them, not from the stomach. And
after the taking of food what happens is that, at the same time, the veins turn
themselves to the food and the stomach draws to itself from them as much as
had previously been emptied by the veins. Hunger, then, is the perception of
the sucking, whereas with regard to the other two, one leads in the milking of
the veins, and this is also called appetite, having the same name as the other
and is a physical action, not a psychical one. An emptying precedes such an
appetite so there are altogether five symptoms arranged in order following
one another. First there is the emptying; second is the physical appetite of the
emptied parts; next is the sucking of the stomach; next is the sensation of this;
last of all there is the psychical appetite of this.
See the discussion in Adamson (: –).
Symp. Caus. .. (.–K), tr. Johnston (: ).
. Natural or Innate Capacities
The main purpose of this passage is to provide an account of hunger, and it
proves to be a fascinating insight into how the physical (produced by
nature, φύσις) and psychic (produced by the soul, ψυχή) activities,
governed by two distinct principal parts (the liver and the brain, respect-
ively), are integrated. Their activities take place not contemporaneously:
the psychic sensation follows physical appetite. For the sake of clarity, the
current discussion is only preoccupied with the first part of the phenom-
enon, governed by the liver and consisting in the first three stages (as Galen
lays them out in the final sentence of the passage). The psychic aspect of
this phenomenon, that is, the question of how the αἴσθησις of the lack of
nutriment is produced, will be discussed in Chapter , together with a
broader discussion of the activities governed by the brain.
Hunger begins with a lack of nourishment, which produces what Galen
calls a physical appetite (ὄρεξις ἡ φυσική). This appetite leads to the
drawing from the veins, which in turn starts drawing from the stomach.
At this point, the physical part of the hunger phenomenon ends. The
language of ‘milking’ and ‘drawing’ suggests that the physical appetite is
just a matter of tissues exercising the attractive capacity, and in fact, Galen
typically describes vegetative capacities as the ability to attract what bene-
fits and reject what harms.
One of the clearest formulations of the scope
of such actions can be found in On My Own Opinions, and this passage
also contains an enlightening elaboration of how he understands the
distinction between the physical and the psychic.
Animals, argues Galen, are capable of perceiving their environment
owing to sense perception, while plants have perception only in a restricted
sense. It seems impossible, he continues, that plants are able to attract what
is appropriate and reject what is inappropriate without first recognising
these two kinds. Therefore, this recognition (γνωρίζειν) must be some
kind of a capacity. Then Galen explains that people misunderstand Plato’s
description of the nature of this capacity,
even though he makes it clear
that plants have a different kind of perception (ἕτερον εἶναι γένος
It is also important that these capacities are found throughout the body, in every part that is
to be nourished, including, for example, the controversial spleen (Nat. Fac. . (, –
Helmreich¼.–K)).
The distinction of capacities is certainly not invented by Galen; see Debru (: –).
There are two different ways of translating this part of the text. Boudon-Millot and Pietrobelli
(: ), and Nutton (: ) read Galen as suggesting that Plato did not ascribe to plants
γνωριστικὴν δύναμιν, while Wilberding (: n) argues, on the basis of Plat. Tim. .–
Schröder, that Galen suggests that people misunderstand the kind of perceptive capacity
plants have.
Nutrition, Growth and Vegetative Capacities
αἰσθήσεως ἐντοῖς φυτοῖς).
The difference between cognitive capacities
and vegetative perception is explained in the following sentence, where
Galen notes that vegetative perception consists in the ability to perceive
only these two impressions, accompanied by pleasure and pain. Plants are
unable to perceive their environments in any other way, by contrast with
the sensory-perceptual capacities of animals.
Presumably, the key difference is that all the plants and animal parts
that belong to the vegetative domain cannot grasp any object they come
into contact with; their sensory capabilities are unlike sense perception,
which is able to perceive various properties of the object. The vegetative
soul, in other words, cannot sense what an object is like when it comes
into contact with it. It can only register whether this object is beneficial
or harmful and accept it or reject it accordingly. Although Galen does
not say it explicitly, it seems reasonable to assume that the vegetative
soul cannot perceive something as harmful and still accept it.
Therefore, its ‘ perception’ is just a reaction; the kind of diagnostics
the vegetative soul is able to perform consists in simply triggering one of
the two possible reactions available to it: acceptance or rejection. This
reading explains Galen’s refusal to attribute sense perception to the
vegetative soul. As far as Galen is concerned, it only ‘perceives’ avery
small range of properties it comes into contact with. It does not have
the capacity to distinguish between, for example, an apple and a piece of
paper as such, although it could distinguish between (or, to put it
otherwise, react differently to) ‘nutriment’ and ‘non-nutriment’ .
When blood is delivered via veins to, for example, a muscle, it ‘senses’
beneficial material and accepts it.
See Plato Ti. A. See also Das (: ) and Wilberding (: –).
Prop. Plac. . ( Lami Garofalo). See also MM . (.K) where Galen describes the
treatment by baths with an explanation that the nature extends to the pleasant and withdraws from
what is not. See also the discussion in note .
Although such a scenario is conceivable if a body is in a diseased state. However, these are by
definition abnormal conditions, in which capacities are not working the way they are supposed to.
This reinforces the conclusion that, strictly speaking, natural capacities are not able to behave in
such a way.
My reading of this passage is in agreement with Wilberding’s(: ) interpretation of these
capacities as, effectively, a binary reaction. This interpretation has been criticised by Das ()on
the grounds of making the attractive capacity in both animate and inanimate objects the same (this
possibility is discussed in Wilberding (: ), arguing that the difference lies in animate objects
attracting and assimilating the material completely). Das proposes that sympathetic reaction, rather
than the ‘deterministic’ model of alteration, underpins the ‘choice’ plants make, and this model is,
broadly speaking, borrowed from the Stoic oikeiōsis. This criticism is not entirely compelling, as the
four-quality theory is a much more fine-grained explanation than both the sympathetic reaction and
. Natural or Innate Capacities